Defender Michael Keane believes the Clarets have faced sterner tests than bouncing back from the disappointing defeat to Crystal Palace.

The 22-year-old arrived on loan at Turf Moor from Manchester United midway through a 10-game winless streak in the Premier League, a sequence which saw Sean Dyche’s side find the net just five times.

Keane hailed the character of the squad to recover from that barren spell and the club’s latest permanent signing insists that they’ll battle back to prove the doubters wrong again.

“The lads have been playing really well,” he said. “We have got a break now so we’ve got a couple of weeks to get over it and make sure we are ready to go for Sunderland.

“The squad is not short of character. Today we are disappointed but we will get over it pretty quickly and make sure we are ready to go next week.

“It’s not nice to have to come back from a defeat but we have done it before. The team didn’t win for 10 or so games and that’s more damaging than losing one game. “The team has showed we have got the spirit to come back and I’m sure we will.”

While the squad won’t want to dwell too much on the surrender of a two-goal cushion against the Eagles, Keane accepts that he and his team-mates will have to reflect on the performance and result to put things right for the clash with Sunderland.

“We are disappointed, especially after going two goals up,” he said. “We are normally quite solid at the back with our shape but we weren’t ourselves and we got punished for it.

“We’ll have to watch the game back and have a look. There’s no excuses there, it just didn’t happen for us. We are normally comfortable in those positions but it happened in mid-week (versus Spurs) and we need to learn our lessons from these.

“We haven’t learned quickly enough and it’s happened again so we missed the chance to put some more points on the board. We have to dust ourselves down and focus on the next game.”

After Ben Mee and Danny Ings had earned the advantage against Alan Pardew’s side the Clarets were temporarily stationed 12th in the table, indicating just how tight the fight for survival is going to be.

Keane said: “It’s going to be tight all the way through the season and we will have to keep fighting to the end and hopefully it falls our way.”